“Christmas Ritual”

“Another ritual the children anticipated with impatience was the trip to Lazarus, a large downtown department store in their hometown. The family rarely went downtown and the fact that this trip took place at nighttime added to its mystery and romance. A seventy-five-foot-high Christmas tree made out of silvered electric lights blazed across the front of the grand building. Its windows were all decorated in the holiday theme, featuring mechanical elves bending and turning, twisting and spinning as they busily made children’s presents for the big day; the three Wise Men, elaborately and elegantly costumed in gemmy robes and bearing gilt urns overflowing with precious gifts for Emmanuel; and beatific angels, hovering in mid-air, on wings of gossamer, white and silver, their gestures and smiles radiant with love for the newborn babe. Inside, the store was nervous chaos, as shoppers with little time and even less patience, sought guidance from overworked clerks on “just the right” gifts and then, of course, their location and prices. Men in long dark overcoats paused uncertainly near counters behind whose glass lay jewelry and women’s watches. Women, buttoned up in long coats, with purses dangling from their arms and scarves flung around their necks, strode rapidly, with far more of a knowing air than the men, toward their departments of interest. Children were constantly running off, chasing one another in the colorful merchandise-clogged aisles to the consternation of their chiding mothers. Once found, the missing children were jerked, more than led, along by the hand, all the while looking up at their mothers explaining why it was really their brother’s fault.”